Tag: thanksgiving

Last night I spent hours watching people jump from burning buildings. Winter left me thinking about plane crashes, explosions, the number of days we’ve gone without an incident in the workplace, fingers that don’t bend the way they’re supposed to, legs that are a bit too short for even tiny bodies and can’t be made to cooperate. The Hangman card neglects to address the cost of self-inflicted funeral arrangements, and the power of choosing death instead of suffering it unexpected and terrible, flames and cannon-fired water doing nothing to slow the inferno.

*

Winter is crafted for hibernation. Every activated limb requests rest, only to be tested again and again. Unrealistic demands are made of checking accounts and credit cards. Ovens are used with greased determination. Relatives are contacted to commemorate entangled threads of DNA. Gift lists are exchanged, and people look forward to working.

*

Wikipedia is unfair to conspiracy theorists, reporting findings on actual X-Files of everyday bumbling CIA investigations in snide tones reserved for college freshmen making snappy retorts to tenured professors. A pet theory coaxed to life with fermented anxiety and selected video viewing is debunkt courtesy of a source-free Popular Mechanics opinion piece, and I wonder if that magazine has ever been cited before a Wikipedia contributor had his condescending druthers. I don’t know the line between truth and conspiracy. What I know is that each president prematurely greys, and switches up statements once complex reality crashes through the front gates of town hall debates and lands in lap, unchanged.

*

I think my relationship will survive another winter, even if it is murder and feelings.

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Winter changed somewhere and managers started hating their workers. Paying them a reasonable wage is the stuff of unions of yore. Benefits are things the government should supply (once properly paid and then paid again). Workers respond in kind, showing up when they feel like it, yawning away mornings when they don’t, escaping for smoke breaks without habits, monitoring windows and wondering what the point of hard work might be in an era when it goes unrewarded. The people who jumped? They arrived early.

Maybe someone will cure cancer. Maybe someone will play violin on the train home. Maybe someone will hand out juice boxes on the street corner. Maybe tattoos will start to leak. Maybe Sunday will come twice. Maybe.

*

Aisles blocked by people making desperate phone calls home to determine whether or not grandpa is allergic to wheat and eggs. A woman wearing a pink surgical mask asking me where to find the shopping carts. A bagger giving himself a crude haircut in the breakroom with a bowie knife. A man holding one container of premade flour-thickened gravy, and one container of cornstarch gravy, looking around before stating: “I don’t know what to do.” Another, in the midst of shoulder-to-shoulder turkey requests: “What is the fat content of this sausage, exactly?” Then someone rolls out a cart of wine samples, and the workers start circling.

Motivation. Result. Hard work. Windows.

*

Somewhere, in the morning, a warehouse will be warmed by the sweat of a thousand laborers racing to stuff things into boxes. Somewhere, far away, a wrist grows thick with button clicks. In the morning, the lines outside of doors will snake around stores and I will swallow the tail. Before this there will be eating, gratitude skimmed from the surface. Cynicism sends me back for seconds.

*

The Hanged Man on fading screens no longer knows the light of spring. I’ll ask him to stoke coal from the parts of me diamond-pressed. To show me three windows that don’t have such a drop. To show me what happens, after all that burning. I’ll ask him. This winter. I will.